Let's Nerf Saryn: A Design Proposal

[Stinkhorse]

So there's a lot of kvetching about Dante. Why should he be nerfed when Saryn isn't? That's a great point. Let's nerf Saryn!

I'm kidding, I kid. We all had a laugh, and now let's talk about the actual reason for this post. Warframe has changed a lot since Saryn was released, and I think they've put her at odds with what the game is becoming. With only a couple tweaks she could keep her core theme, and even several for her existing mechanics, while altering her scope so she actually plays the game.

Currently she can annihilate enemies across a map which denies engagement to other players and allows the player themselves to be largely hands off in terms of their own engagement. This sucks. The game should be played actively.

That said my goal here is to keep the base concept of a walking plague. Her ability to spread spores to enemies, and other players helping to further that spread, would still be foundational.

 

**Passive - Enhanced Status Duration**

This is pretty core to the frame's identity and doesn't need real fixing. I might suggest turning it into an aura that also enhances the duration of other players as well though, just to encourage staying in affinity range.

 

**Ability 1 - Spores**

The big change would be turning her Spores into a means of potential damage based on Saryn's proximity. They don't do anything lethal on their own. Instead it would generate a growing damage number just like it does now. The speed of that growth would be determined by the number of enemies with an active infection stack. In order to cash in on that, Saryn is actually going to have to get her hands dirty. If the enemies are dry kindling, then the Spores are accelerant and Saryn the match. Attacks at range do half of the accumulated potential damage to a target, and would spread it to other enemies within X number of meters. Melee fully activates the potential damage and applies it outward in a diminishing wave to all nearby enemies that have been infected, but does not spread the infection directly.

Spore's potential damage growth would scale logarithmically so there's an initial spike that tapers off, but that can be reapplied to jumpstart it again. If spores are left in an enemy long enough without any further action, the effect will wear off like any other status aliment, but this number would of course be affected by Saryn's passive.

As a secondary effect, enemies affected by spores will come down with coughing fits, doing a mild DOT, and throwing off their aim. The greater the build up, the weaker their accuracy becomes. This secondary effect would be tempered by enemy level, so you won't be able to throw a parade down Grineer Street and never catch a bullet.

 

**Ability 2 - Patient Zero**

Molt becomes Patient Zero. It remains a panic button, but now applies the molt effect to an enemy within a cone of proximity to the player's crosshair. Saryn flushes all status effects before teleporting to that enemy. They're rooted in place where they erupt into a DOT Spore cloud. Any enemies caught in the cloud either get a stack of Spores, or have their existing stack reactivated. The rooted patient zero becomes targetable by other enemies, who will kill them to remove the spore cloud effect. As an added bonus the cloud prevents line of sight, giving players a smoke screen they can use to control sections of the battlefield. Finally any Patient Zero affected enemies that are still standing at the end of a round are automatic killed to prevent delays.

 

**Ability 3 - Toxic Lash**

This ability mostly remains the same. It causes both ranged and melee attacks to deal toxin damage, while also to reactivating the Spore scaling effect on any enemy hit. The only notable change is that other players can be targeted with ranged weapons, and hits will to grant their own weapons the effect of Toxic Lash for a limited amount of time.

 

**Ability 4 - Pandemic**

A high cost crowd clear, Pandemic would cause an AOE to activate any spore stacks, converting them to viral, and applying them at full damage. At the very edge of the AOE, the effect would jump to the nearest enemy with a Spore stack on them, apply damage, and then jump again. This will chain as long as there's an enemy in range, but with diminishing returns on damage past twenty meters.

 

**Conclusion**

With these adjusted abilities, Saryn would still have her functional identity as the premiere disease frame. They would remain a powerhouse, capable of dealing ridiculous amounts of damage and nuking crowd of fodder, the only catch would be actually having to look at an enemy to do it. It would also localize those giant detonations so that the players around her wouldn't have to watch a map of engaging mechanics go up in smoke without a chance to take part.

Thank you for your consideration.

Edited April 17 by Stinkhorse

[Raarsi]

4 hours ago, Stinkhorse said:

So there's a lot of kvetching about Dante. Why should he be nerfed when Saryn isn't?

Ramp-up time.  Once you get into higher levels, Saryn's nukes require ramp-up time, while Dante had (and still has) no problem deleting rooms of enemies at those levels every two seconds.

[L3512]

Saryn has been reworked probably more than any other frame. As a nuker, Saryn only really shines in low ESO levels where there is sufficient density of low level enemies. Saryn is best played as a weapon buffer and is fine as is however emerald shards do help with nuking at higher levels.

[Nybris]

well what i think about balanceing the aoe abilitys of frames we should first find a base to balance around if we balance around level 1 enemys the results will be different if we balance around level 1000 enemys also where should we balance it around if we use Grineer as enemys we would have different results to useing infested as a base

so the only thing i see is Void Fissure are a problem because there is a mechanic that punishes players for over performing what for me is not realy an problem the aoe frame abilitys causes but the mechanic behind it needing to transform enemys into courrpted that then drop reactant

but maybe that the whole aoe Frame stuff does not bother me at all is that if i want to avoid something in warframe i just do it by choices i can do well but then again i still take the easy way by simply playing privat rather then in a Open group where all i can expect that players do whatever they wanna do
 

[.Tuopadre.]

Quote

Currently she can annihilate enemies across a map

No she can't, Saryn is not a nuker.

Her spores can passively clear rooms in low level missions when fully modded and min-maxed, in Steel Path mode needd so much ramp-up time that the mission ends before they start to deal decent damage over time, whereas Dante could just faceroll on the keyboard and instantly nuke any room at any level on top of giving the entire squad hundred of thousand Overguard.

Saryn shines for her weapon buffs and wide area armor strip, and she needs emerald archon shards for that, not for her AoE damage.

All things considered, everything you suggested would only make her stronger.

[Fred_Avant_2019]

No thanks.

Bait titles asides, it's unnecessary.

Killing across the map with Saryn involves active enough gameplay, killing stuff with just spores and miasma isn't exactly a thing without two green shards either.

If you want to absolutely nuke a tileset with Saryn, there's little chance it doesn't involve Acid Shells or Vulcan Blitz, ramping up spores to do relevant damage takes some time, and eventually you reach a point of equilibrium where it'll kill fast enough to break the spore chains and eventually decay.

She excels at clearing fodder mainly, overguarded stuff, not so much, Viral doesn't apply to overguard points loss. Shield she can bypass, but only with Toxin Lash, which you have to use your guns for.

 

Besides, Revenant Prime is the most used frame of 2023. I don't wanna hear no complaints from players about not being able to interact with anything when they all use a frame whose entire kit revolves around ignoring everything about the content, between complete immortality and %max health true damage that can be increased with roar. At least, bad Saryn players get to be punished by the game.

[vixenpixel]

If I see a Saryn in a mission Im in, I'm always like "Thank god, smooth sailing."

[Agall]

How about we compromise, make no changes to Saryn and just make Radial Javelin a pseudo-exalted instead.

[Fred_Avant_2019]

il y a 9 minutes, Agall a dit :

How about we compromise, make no changes to Saryn and just make Radial Javelin a pseudo-exalted instead.

Hey I remember this guy. Still agree that Radial Javelin needs a buff.

[RustonMartin]

Most of damage on saryn is dealt by weapons, not by her skills. Actually, her "damaging" skills is just low MR trash.  Her power is 1st ability augment buff, 2nd shield gate, 3rd buff and 4th ability buff (xata's or nourish)

Passive - ok
Spores - it's buff, cause they dont damage at all on adequate lvls (1000+)
Patient zero - no, it will break shield gating, the best survivability in the game, that a lot of warframes has. If you change it saryn will became trash on adequate lvls (1000+)
Toxic lash - ok
Pandemic - i dont see how it would help me on 1000+ lvls, damage would be too low, just like it was - change to xata's or nourish
 

[Agall]

1 hour ago, Fred_Avant_2019 said:

Hey I remember this guy. Still agree that Radial Javelin needs a buff.

The way I see it, if other Warframes like Excalibur has sufficient AOE damage with something like Radial Javelin, the complaints about how OP Saryn is would be mitigated. The best and simplest way I can think to make that occur is to make Radial Javelin a pseudo-exalted, being a Warframe everyone gets for free that also had a power melee weapon available in form of Exalted Blade. No need for crazy stat sticks to make a pseudo-exalted powerful if you also have an Exalted weapon.

[(XBOX)XYZ RUMBEL]

No

[Joezone619]

Let's not nerf saryn.

[Stinkhorse]

@RustonMartin Thanks for actually engaging with the concept, unlike everyone else.

I'll admit, the ideas all began with having Saryn have to shoot or strike targets to activate her spore damage, so some of it might not be well thought out. I'm also not really up on the techniques that folks use to survive in the deep game outside of Duviri.

Would you mind going over how the Patient Zero ability would foul up shield gating?

[Venus-Venera]

Am 19.4.2024 um 07:31 schrieb Joezone619:

Let's not nerf saryn.

true. When I see topics like this, my eyes bleed.
If you're looking for a challenge, you should play Warframe with a steering wheel... without your hands... and your eyes closed.

too many warframes and weapons are useless garbage. this is the construction site!

[insanitybit]

> Currently she can annihilate enemies across a map which denies engagement to other players and allows the player themselves to be largely hands off in terms of their own engagement. This sucks. The game should be played actively.

I just don't see this as a major problem for two reasons:

1. People don't like to play that way. The vast majority of players are running a weapons platform Saryn even though it's less efficient than a spores Saryn, and for one reason - it's vastly more fun and engaging. The majority of players do not actually want to play AFK. This is shown to be true over and over and over again across frames and "meta" playstyles. People do those sorts of builds as memes, very few play that way. I've personally never run into a Saryn that plays like that, they're all weapon platforms in my experience.

2. Playing Saryn through spores nuking isn't actually AFK if you want to pick up loot, and you do. She can spread spores so far and kill so far away in many directions that you're actually playing less efficiently because you have to run around collecting loot. Far better to have enemies come to *you* and bring the loot to where you're staying, or to run in a set pattern rather than all over the map.

Basically, I just reject that this is a problem outright. And if it's not a problem it doesn't need to be solved.

[Mr.Holyroller]

Saryn doesnt need a rework, she scales poorly aside from just being an armor stripper while having gloom up in higher level steel path.

She ends up struggling to even keep her spores going in a group because people are killing much faster than you